Any Foreign Licence Exchanges Without a Test, and Since December 2019 the Condition Is Habitual Residence of 185 Days in the Calendar Year
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Denmark on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
195 exceptions recorded across 74 countries · none match Denmark to Montenegro · Driving and licence exchange
Montenegro exchanges a foreign driving licence without a driving test and without a country list. The rule is in the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima: article 176 sets out who may drive on a foreign licence and for how long, and article 177 sets out who may be issued a Montenegrin one. A foreigner staying temporarily in Montenegro may drive on a valid foreign or international licence for as long as it is valid; a foreigner who has been granted residence may drive on the foreign licence for six months from the day of entry into Montenegro, and is then expected to exchange it. The exchange itself is a Montenegrin licence issued on request, without taking the driving test, on the basis of the valid foreign licence, subject to the age, medical fitness, residence, no-driving-ban and clean-fines-register conditions; the foreign licence is handed to the Ministry and sent back to the state that issued it. The amending Act of 6 December 2019 made two changes that matter to someone arriving. It widened the six-month group in article 176(4), replacing permanent settlement, refugee status and additional protection with approved temporary or permanent residence in Montenegro, or international or temporary protection - so a temporary permit now puts the holder in the six-month window. And it replaced the residence condition in article 177(1)(3) with habitual residence in Montenegro, defining it in the words of the European licensing directive: a person has habitual residence who stays in Montenegro lawfully for at least 185 days in a calendar year, because of personal or occupational circumstances showing a close link between that person and the place where he stays; and where occupational ties are in a different place from personal ties, the place of the personal ties governs, provided he returns there regularly.
At a glance
- Habitual residence
- At least 185 days in a calendar year, on personal or occupational groundsas of 2019-12-14
Article 177(2) of the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima, inserted by article 22 of the amending Act of 6 December 2019 (Sluzbeni list CG 66/19), which also replaced article 177(1)(3) with the habitual-residence condition.
- Driving test on exchange
- None
Article 177 of the Act provides that persons within article 176(2) and (4) are issued a licence on request without taking the driving test, on the basis of a valid foreign licence. The paragraph was renumbered from 2 to 4 by article 22 of the 2019 amending Act. We do not quote it: the gazette's own PDF of the 2012 Act extracts with a damaged character map and is not safe to quote from.
- How long you may drive on the foreign licence after moving
- Six months from the day of entry into Montenegro
Article 176(4) of the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima. Same limitation: the figure is in the 2012 Act, whose stored reading has a damaged character map, so it is stated here from a reading rather than quoted from it.
- Who gets the six-month window
- A foreigner granted temporary or permanent residence, or international or temporary protection, in Montenegroas of 2019-12-14
Article 176(4) as amended by article 21 of the amending Act of 6 December 2019, which is quoted on this record.
- Holding both licences
- Not allowed - the police seize the foreign one on the spot
Article 297 of the Act, which directs the seized licence to be sent to the Ministry for return to the issuing authority. Not quoted here, for the same reason as above.
Requirements
- Habitual residence in Montenegro, meaning lawful residence of at least 185 days in a calendar year on personal or occupational grounds showing a close link
- A valid foreign driving licence, which is surrendered to the Ministry and returned to the issuing state
- The age condition for the category, medical fitness proved by a medical certificate, no ban on driving, and no entry in the register of fines for a road-safety offence
- Where the foreign licence does not show which category it covers, a document from the issuing authority that does
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Denmark
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«U članu 176 stav 4 riječi: „odobreno stalno nastanjenje u Crnoj Gori, lice kome je odobren status izbjeglice u Crnoj Gori, lice kome je odobrena dodatna zaštita u Crnoj Gori,” zamjenjuju se riječima: „u Crnoj Gori odobren privremeni ili stalni boravak, odnosno međunarodna ili privremena zaštita”.»Our translation - not official
In article 176 paragraph 4 the words 'granted permanent settlement in Montenegro, a person who has been granted refugee status in Montenegro, a person who has been granted additional protection in Montenegro,' are replaced by the words 'granted temporary or permanent residence in Montenegro, or international or temporary protection'.
Published 6 December 2019. It is what brings a holder of an ordinary temporary residence permit inside the six-month rule and inside the no-test exchange.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The official gazette of Montenegro, published by the public institution JU Sluzbeni list Crne Gore, which also runs the country's legal information system (PIS). Everything the Montenegrin state enacts appears here and only here as an authentic text: Acts of the Skupstina with the President's promulgating decree printed above them, Government decrees and decisions, ministerial rulebooks, Constitutional Court decisions, and separate series for municipal regulations, international treaties and the predecessor Sluzbeni list Republike Crne Gore up to 2006. Each instrument has a record page at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id> which is server-rendered and carries, in plain text, the date of publication, the gazette issue, the registry number, the issuing body, the date of entry into force and often the date of first application, the EU negotiating chapter it belongs to, and the status Vazeci or Nevazeci - in force or no longer in force. The same page cross-links the instruments this one amends, the instruments that amend it, the constitutional provisions it was made under and the subordinate acts made under it, which is the cheapest way in existence to assemble a Montenegrin amendment chain. The text itself is a PDF at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id>/download, one file per instrument rather than one per issue. Issues are indexed by year at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/registri?type=0&year=<year> with type 0 for Sluzbeni list Crne Gore and type 3 for the pre-2006 Republican series, and each issue page lists every instrument in it with a link. Article 13 of the Constitution puts the Cyrillic and Latin scripts on an equal footing and the gazette uses both: some Acts of 2010 and 2011 and some Government decisions are printed wholly in Cyrillic, and a /cyr/ mirror of the site exists. Amending Acts are published as free-standing instruments in the classic civil-law form - 'in article N, paragraph M is replaced and reads' - and are never consolidated into the parent Act here, so the current text of a provision has to be assembled from the base Act and every amendment that touched it.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments and it does not consolidate them. There is no consolidated text of any Act on this site: the regis.sluzbenilist.me legal information system that would give one is an Angular application that returns a 6 KB shell to any fetcher, and its own feature table reads as a subscription product, so it is not reachable by any tool this project has. Assembling the law in force therefore means reading the base Act plus every amending Act, and the site's own cross-reference list cannot be relied on to be complete - the record for the Zakon o crnogorskom drzavljanstvu lists four of its seven amending Acts, the record for the Zakon o porezu na dohodak fizickih lica lists ten of at least sixteen, and the record for the citizenship-by-investment decision lists none at all because the record is classified 'Neklasifikovan'. The site search is client-side only: the search box on /propisi is an Alpine.js model and a searchTerm query parameter is ignored by the server, which returns a generic list, so an instrument is found through the issue index, through a cross-link on a related record, or through an external search engine. Some record identifiers are UUIDs rather than numbers and those do not answer at /download. Two of its own PDFs are defective and must not be quoted from: the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima (33/2012) extracts with a broken character map - Cyrillic a, e and o standing inside Latin words, C-circumflex for C-caron, t-cedilla for z-caron - through the body of the Act while the penalty articles come out clean, and downloading the file directly or passing it through the extraction service makes no difference. It must not be cited for anything the state has not enacted: it carries no guidance, no fee a ministry charges in practice, no processing time, no country list maintained outside a decree, and nothing at all about how an authority applies the text it prints. The status field is a useful signal and not a legal conclusion: the citizenship-by-investment decision is still marked Vazeci although its own article 18 stopped applying on 31 December 2022.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
«U članu 177 stav 1 tačka 3 mijenja se i glasi: „3) ima uobičajeno boravište u Crnoj Gori;” Poslije stava 1 dodaju se dva nova stava koja glase: „Uobičajeno boravište u smislu ovog zakona ima lice koje u Crnoj Gori boravi u skladu sa zakonom, najmanje 185 dana u kalendarskoj godini, zbog ličnih ili poslovnih okolnosti koje ukazuju na čvrstu povezanost između tog lica i mjesta gdje boravi. Uobičajenim boravištem lica čije se poslovne veze nalaze u mjestu različitom od njegovih ličnih veza i koje zbog toga boravi u dvije ili više država smatraće se mjesto njegovih ličnih veza, pod uslovom da se to lice tamo redovno vraća.” U stavu 3 riječi: „stavom 2“ zamjenjuju se riječima: „stavom 4“. U stavu 6 riječi: „st. 1 i 2“ zamjenjuju se riječima: „st. 1 i 4“. Dosadašnji st. 2 do 6 postaju st. 4 do 8.»Our translation - not official
In article 177 paragraph 1 point 3 is replaced and reads: '3) has habitual residence in Montenegro;'. After paragraph 1 two new paragraphs are added which read: 'A person has habitual residence within the meaning of this Act who stays in Montenegro in accordance with the law for at least 185 days in a calendar year, on account of personal or occupational circumstances which indicate a close link between that person and the place where he stays. The habitual residence of a person whose occupational ties are in a place different from his personal ties, and who therefore stays in two or more states, is taken to be the place of his personal ties, provided that that person returns there regularly.' In paragraph 3 the words 'paragraph 2' are replaced by the words 'paragraph 4'. In paragraph 6 the words 'paragraphs 1 and 2' are replaced by the words 'paragraphs 1 and 4'. The former paragraphs 2 to 6 become paragraphs 4 to 8.
The definition is the one in Directive 2006/126/EC article 12, transposed into Montenegrin law three years before the EU chapter of the Foreigners Act was written.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The official gazette of Montenegro, published by the public institution JU Sluzbeni list Crne Gore, which also runs the country's legal information system (PIS). Everything the Montenegrin state enacts appears here and only here as an authentic text: Acts of the Skupstina with the President's promulgating decree printed above them, Government decrees and decisions, ministerial rulebooks, Constitutional Court decisions, and separate series for municipal regulations, international treaties and the predecessor Sluzbeni list Republike Crne Gore up to 2006. Each instrument has a record page at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id> which is server-rendered and carries, in plain text, the date of publication, the gazette issue, the registry number, the issuing body, the date of entry into force and often the date of first application, the EU negotiating chapter it belongs to, and the status Vazeci or Nevazeci - in force or no longer in force. The same page cross-links the instruments this one amends, the instruments that amend it, the constitutional provisions it was made under and the subordinate acts made under it, which is the cheapest way in existence to assemble a Montenegrin amendment chain. The text itself is a PDF at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id>/download, one file per instrument rather than one per issue. Issues are indexed by year at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/registri?type=0&year=<year> with type 0 for Sluzbeni list Crne Gore and type 3 for the pre-2006 Republican series, and each issue page lists every instrument in it with a link. Article 13 of the Constitution puts the Cyrillic and Latin scripts on an equal footing and the gazette uses both: some Acts of 2010 and 2011 and some Government decisions are printed wholly in Cyrillic, and a /cyr/ mirror of the site exists. Amending Acts are published as free-standing instruments in the classic civil-law form - 'in article N, paragraph M is replaced and reads' - and are never consolidated into the parent Act here, so the current text of a provision has to be assembled from the base Act and every amendment that touched it.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments and it does not consolidate them. There is no consolidated text of any Act on this site: the regis.sluzbenilist.me legal information system that would give one is an Angular application that returns a 6 KB shell to any fetcher, and its own feature table reads as a subscription product, so it is not reachable by any tool this project has. Assembling the law in force therefore means reading the base Act plus every amending Act, and the site's own cross-reference list cannot be relied on to be complete - the record for the Zakon o crnogorskom drzavljanstvu lists four of its seven amending Acts, the record for the Zakon o porezu na dohodak fizickih lica lists ten of at least sixteen, and the record for the citizenship-by-investment decision lists none at all because the record is classified 'Neklasifikovan'. The site search is client-side only: the search box on /propisi is an Alpine.js model and a searchTerm query parameter is ignored by the server, which returns a generic list, so an instrument is found through the issue index, through a cross-link on a related record, or through an external search engine. Some record identifiers are UUIDs rather than numbers and those do not answer at /download. Two of its own PDFs are defective and must not be quoted from: the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima (33/2012) extracts with a broken character map - Cyrillic a, e and o standing inside Latin words, C-circumflex for C-caron, t-cedilla for z-caron - through the body of the Act while the penalty articles come out clean, and downloading the file directly or passing it through the extraction service makes no difference. It must not be cited for anything the state has not enacted: it carries no guidance, no fee a ministry charges in practice, no processing time, no country list maintained outside a decree, and nothing at all about how an authority applies the text it prints. The status field is a useful signal and not a legal conclusion: the citizenship-by-investment decision is still marked Vazeci although its own article 18 stopped applying on 31 December 2022.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source
Practical notes
We could not quote the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima itself. The gazette's own PDF of Sluzbeni list CG 33/2012 extracts with a damaged character map: Cyrillic letters stand in the middle of Latin words, C-caron is rendered as C-circumflex and z-caron as t-cedilla, through most of the body of the Act although the penalty articles come out clean. Two different extractions, through the extraction service and by downloading the file ourselves, produced the same damage, so this is the publisher's file and not our tooling. A quotation copied out of it would verify against our own misreading, which is exactly what the quotation check cannot catch, so none is offered. The content of articles 176, 177 and 297 reported here was read in that file and is stated as a reading rather than quoted as text.
The two things that are quoted - the 185-day definition of habitual residence and the widening of the six-month group - come from the 2019 amending Act, whose file is clean.
No list of countries whose licences Montenegro recognises was found, and article 177 does not contain one: the no-test exchange turns on holding a valid foreign licence, not on where it was issued. Nothing published by the Ministry of the Interior was read.
- issuesZakon o izmjenama i dopunama zakona o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima, Sluzbeni list Crne Gore broj 66/2019
Sluzbeni list Crne Gore
About this source
The official gazette of Montenegro, published by the public institution JU Sluzbeni list Crne Gore, which also runs the country's legal information system (PIS). Everything the Montenegrin state enacts appears here and only here as an authentic text: Acts of the Skupstina with the President's promulgating decree printed above them, Government decrees and decisions, ministerial rulebooks, Constitutional Court decisions, and separate series for municipal regulations, international treaties and the predecessor Sluzbeni list Republike Crne Gore up to 2006. Each instrument has a record page at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id> which is server-rendered and carries, in plain text, the date of publication, the gazette issue, the registry number, the issuing body, the date of entry into force and often the date of first application, the EU negotiating chapter it belongs to, and the status Vazeci or Nevazeci - in force or no longer in force. The same page cross-links the instruments this one amends, the instruments that amend it, the constitutional provisions it was made under and the subordinate acts made under it, which is the cheapest way in existence to assemble a Montenegrin amendment chain. The text itself is a PDF at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/propisi/<id>/download, one file per instrument rather than one per issue. Issues are indexed by year at https://www.sluzbenilist.me/registri?type=0&year=<year> with type 0 for Sluzbeni list Crne Gore and type 3 for the pre-2006 Republican series, and each issue page lists every instrument in it with a link. Article 13 of the Constitution puts the Cyrillic and Latin scripts on an equal footing and the gazette uses both: some Acts of 2010 and 2011 and some Government decisions are printed wholly in Cyrillic, and a /cyr/ mirror of the site exists. Amending Acts are published as free-standing instruments in the classic civil-law form - 'in article N, paragraph M is replaced and reads' - and are never consolidated into the parent Act here, so the current text of a provision has to be assembled from the base Act and every amendment that touched it.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It publishes instruments and it does not consolidate them. There is no consolidated text of any Act on this site: the regis.sluzbenilist.me legal information system that would give one is an Angular application that returns a 6 KB shell to any fetcher, and its own feature table reads as a subscription product, so it is not reachable by any tool this project has. Assembling the law in force therefore means reading the base Act plus every amending Act, and the site's own cross-reference list cannot be relied on to be complete - the record for the Zakon o crnogorskom drzavljanstvu lists four of its seven amending Acts, the record for the Zakon o porezu na dohodak fizickih lica lists ten of at least sixteen, and the record for the citizenship-by-investment decision lists none at all because the record is classified 'Neklasifikovan'. The site search is client-side only: the search box on /propisi is an Alpine.js model and a searchTerm query parameter is ignored by the server, which returns a generic list, so an instrument is found through the issue index, through a cross-link on a related record, or through an external search engine. Some record identifiers are UUIDs rather than numbers and those do not answer at /download. Two of its own PDFs are defective and must not be quoted from: the Zakon o bezbjednosti saobracaja na putevima (33/2012) extracts with a broken character map - Cyrillic a, e and o standing inside Latin words, C-circumflex for C-caron, t-cedilla for z-caron - through the body of the Act while the penalty articles come out clean, and downloading the file directly or passing it through the extraction service makes no difference. It must not be cited for anything the state has not enacted: it carries no guidance, no fee a ministry charges in practice, no processing time, no country list maintained outside a decree, and nothing at all about how an authority applies the text it prints. The status field is a useful signal and not a legal conclusion: the citizenship-by-investment decision is still marked Vazeci although its own article 18 stopped applying on 31 December 2022.
We re-read it every 45 days. More about this source